Scarves were trailing behind the prone bodies of kids steering their sleds downhill to the sidewalks. In a lot of houses, small groups of kids would be gathered in front of the Tv watching Hopalong Cassidy or
Howdy Doody or the Three Stooges.
And moms in kitchens would be starting supper, the smells rich and good on the chill melancholy of the fading winter day, spaghetti and pot roasts and cheese casseroles.
“I really need you to think hard, Debbie.”
“I knew that’s what you wanted.”
“What I wanted?”
“Yeah, when you pulled up back there. That you wanted to talk to me about Susan.”
“You were her best friend.”
She took another drag and looked out the window. “I really like this town.”
“So do I.”
“I just wish people didn’t gossip so much.”
“It’s just the way people are. And most people here don’t gossip that much. Just a few of them. And it doesn’t matter where you move to because they’ll be that way there, too.”
“I suppose.” Then, “She wasn’t screwing a lot of guys, if that’s what you mean.”
“I didn’t say she was.”
“She only slept with a couple of guys.”
“I don’t suppose you’d tell me who they are.”
“I wasn’t screwing a lot of guys, either.”
“I’m sure you weren’t.” Then, “Would you tell me who she was sleeping with?”
“Well, Tommy Fennelly for one. But he left for the service three months ago. Camp Pendleton.”
“Wasn’t he a little young for her?”
“He was nineteen. But he’s a real nice kid. A couple of times, he tried to get her off the booze. He sat up with her the whole night at his apartment, she told me. Let her cry and throw up and tear his place apart. She quit for a while, too. Couple of weeks, one time. Not one single drink that whole time.”
Tommy Fennelly had always seemed to me nothing much more than a loafer-a little pool, a few card games, minor trouble with the law now and then. But Debbie had swept all that away.
She’d just made him a damned nice kid.
“Who else?”
She sighed. “And Steve Renauld.”
“At Leopold Bloom’s?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t believe it, either. He’s such a loser. Mr. High and Mighty.”
“How the hell did she get hooked up with him?”
“Well, you know, we used to go in there and look around. He and his wife have nice stuff in there.
Or anyway that’s what Susan told me. I couldn’t tell. I mean, Susan was educated.
I’m just a bumpkin.”
“Same here.”
“You’re a lawyer, McCain.”
“A lot of lawyers are bumpkins.”
“Really?”
“Hell, yes.”
“Well, you’re not as much of a bumpkin as I am, anyway.”
“So you started going to Renauld’s place.”
“And he started asking Susan if he could paint her. Him and his painting. I used to call him “Vincent Van Phony.” He heard me once and really got pissed off. But he kind of wore her down. And she started posing for him. You know, he’s got that so-called studio over on Jackson Street. That’s where they did the dirty deed, anyway.”
“When was this?”
“About a month ago. She said they were both pretty drunk the times it happened.”
“She tell you anything else?”
“Just that he wasn’t much in the sack and that she sort of felt sorry for him. She said that once and I’ve always remembered it.”
“Said what?”
“Said she couldn’t sleep with a man she didn’t feel sorry for. She didn’t like most men. Said they all reminded her of her father. You know, the swaggering type and everything. Renauld’s pretty pathetic so I guess that’s why she slept with him. But I think she got scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of Renauld. He was making it a lot more of it than it was. She went to bed because she felt sorry for him, like I said. But he saw it as this big romance. He was going to leave his wife and daughter. He wanted them to move to Iowa City.
You know, he was always talking like Iowa City was -what’s that place the Arabs always go to?”
“Mecca?”
“Yeah, he always talked like Iowa City was Mecca. Or something. She was going to run away from Kenny and he was going to run away from his wife and they were going to be this real cool artistic couple and live in Iowa City.”
“And she didn’t see it that way?”
“Are you kidding? She got to be as afraid of Renauld as she was of Kenny. He really started putting a lot of pressure on her.”
We were at the supermarket. I swung into the drive. A lot of people left their cars running.
You could see the exhaust putt-putting out of their mufflers. Folks trust one another out here, and that’s nice.
“Maybe you should talk to Renauld,” she said, opening the door and flipping the butt of her Winston out the door.
“That’s a good idea.”
“I just hope, if Kenny didn’t kill her, you find out who did.”
“So do I,” I said.
She was gone then, hurrying through the dusk into the lights and hustle of the supermarket where a hundred shoppers were trying to hurry their way home.
Eleven
I drove past the police station. The big black Indian motorcycle, the one belonging to our esteemed police chief, Cliff Sykes, Jr., wasn’t there.
A block away, I pulled up to a phone booth. It was getting dark, cold-winter dark. Across the street was a small diner with a long, wide front window. Edward Hopper was my favorite painter and the window of the diner looked like something he would have painted; there were six, seven working-class men sitting at a long counter eating their dinner but not in any way communicating with anybody else. Totally isolated in this little strip of light in the otherwise black prairie night. Even the plump waitress in the pink uniform, standing alone by the cash register, seemed forever cursed by isolation and loneliness.
I put in my nickel.
“Hello?”
“Were you eating, Mom?”
“No, honey. But I’ll be putting supper on the table in about fifteen minutes if you want to come over.”
“I’m afraid I’m working tonight.”
“For yourself or the judge?”
I lied. “For myself.”
“Good. You’ll be on your own if you just keep trying. Won’t that be nice when you don’t have to work for the judge anymore?” Having grown up in the Knolls, my mother had no time for the imperious Whitneys.
“Is Ruthie there, Mom?”
“No, hon. I’m afraid she already left for the library. Said she had a lot of homework to do. School seems to be getting her down this year.”
“Oh?”
“She looked so tired lately. And her appetite’s awful.”
“How’s Dad?”
“Well, Cheyenne is on tonight so he’s happy. You know how he likes his westerns.”
The judge had been nice enough to give me a good bonus at Christmastime. I’d finally been able to replace my family’s old 12-inch Arvin with a brand-new 21-inch Admiral console. Now Dad could really enjoy his westerns.
“We’d like to see you sometime, hon.”
“I know, Mom. It’s just I’ve been so busy.”
“Well, the water’s boiling over on the potatoes. I’d better go grab them. Thanks for calling.”
I spent a lot of time in the library when I was a kid. I liked books. But I also liked girls and the library was a good place to sit with a book and watch girls troop in and out. I think even back then, I was looking for a girl to make me forget Pamela. She was never a girl from the Knolls, though. She had to be better than the Knolls. Just as, for Pamela, her ideal man had to be from old, secure money and reputation. Sometimes I wondered if that was the only thing Pamela and I had in common, our shallowness.
On a cold winter night, the steam heat was turned all the way up and the pipes clanked ferociously. The library was built with a Carnegie grant right after the turn of the century.